IAS Exam, the most coveted exam conducted by UPSC every year. This exam has three stages: Prelims, Mains & Interview. You have to pass in all stages to get through this exam. Failing in one stage will make you repeat the whole stages. Civil Services Exam (CSE) Prelims is qualifying nature. It is not counted for your merit but qualifying & it is gateway to your success .Your success depends on your marks in mains & interview. So one must give equal importance to all stages.
Civil Services Exam (CSE) Prelims consists of two paper General Studies Paper 1 & General Studies Paper 2(CSAT) which is qualifying nature.
Civil Services Exam (CSE) Main Exam consists of 4 General Studies paper & an optional paper which has 2 papers which you have to chose according to your interest, availability of materials and scoring pattern.
General Studies Paper are here under:
General Studies-I Indian Heritage and Culture, History and Geography of the World and Society.
General Studies-II Governance, Constitution, Polity, Social Justice and International relations.
General Studies-III Technology, Economic Development, Bio diversity, Environment, Security and Disaster Management
General Studies-IV Ethics, Integrity and Aptitude
This exam spans approximately one year. Aspirants are required to clear all the stages.
This exam requires lot of effort, hard work rather smart work, positive attitude,confidence,passion,perseverance,a great determination to pursue the goal and achieve it and last but not least luck which has its own value.
Before moving into the topic, the strategy to prepare for the exam every aspirant who is really serious about his goal must have or develop some key personality traits which will go long way not only in his preparation but also in his career and definitely can have deep impact on the lives of the individual & society as a whole as civil servant works in close proximity with the society, he works for betterment of society & he is a social change agent.
Let us now speak about characteristics essential for success. One of the most important characteristic to emulate is positive attitude. Whatever the reason one must be diehard positive. Being positive one’s perspective in every aspect will get broaden and will find many ways to solve his/her problems. On the other hand a negative mindset will not find any opportunity & will curse his fate. So being positive in your outlook will take you close to your destination.
Other feature one is passion. If you do any work with passion the end result will be awesome. But if you do it for namesake or on any body’s force the end result will not entice you.
Confidence is the basic success mantra to crack any exam. A beginner to start his/her preparation for the exam must have confidence which definitely makes difference in his journey for success. So an aspirant must be confident throughout his preparation so that he can take up the exam with full confidence and can come out with flying colors.
Now let us move on to the topic of how to prepare for the exam ie Strategy
Before starting your preparation, one must understand the exam pattern, syllabus, what kind of questions asked in the exam & optional subject you want to select .Go through the previous year question paper of both General Studies & Optional Subject. Don’t try to solve question paper but have an idea of what type of questions asked. Based on your interest, availability of material and scoring pattern chose your optional subject.
Once the optional subject is decided get ready to start your battle with all your weapons intact.
Start your preparation in a wholistic approach ie Prelims cum Mains approach. First start preparing with Mains syllabus & common syllabus for both and switch to prelims exclusive. By doing this you will have broader understanding.
Prelims required wide knowledge with vastness of subject and examiner can ask anything under the sky. It requires extensive study.
On the other hand in mains you need to stick to syllabus and in-depth study is required. Covering the whole syllabus, reading, revising and making synopsis is key to success.
Unlike prelims, in mains you need to reproduce, hence you need to read & revise oftenly. Making synopsis help you in the last moment revision, as the mains syllabus is vast you can’t revise whole syllabus in that case synopsis will come to your rescue.
Interview is the last hurdle you need to cross. Interview preparation actually doesn’t require any specialized preparation, as it is your personality which is over the years formed. Hence it is called Personality test. Having said this you can devote your considerable time in preparing your DAF- your bio data,home town, home district, home state, hobby and current affairs.
By systematically preparing all the stages one can expect to give their best effort and attempt and rest leave to god. Ultimately success comes to those who dare and act.
To conclude, successful people don’t do different things but they do things differently.
ALL THE BEST.
